Irish data privacy authorities also required Facebook to take a number of corrective actions to stop data scraping. On Monday, Ireland’s data privacy regulator fined social media giant Facebook an additional EUR 265 million (approximately Rs. 2,250 crores), raising the total amount it has penalized parent company, Meta, almost to EUR 1 billion (roughly Rs. 2,250 crores). The fine was the outcome of an investigation that was opened up last year after it was found that a compiled set of personal information had been taken on Facebook between May 2018 and September 2019 and posted online. Moreover, Facebook was ordered to take a number of corrective actions.
Meta claimed that it had made improvements to its systems during the time of issue, including eliminating the ability to scrape its features in this manner using phone numbers, and had fully cooperated with the investigation of Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC).
The DPC has fined one of Meta’s companies four times as of Monday. It is Meta’s primary privacy watchdog in the EU and has 13 open inquiries involving the social media industry.
The agency issued its Instagram subsidiary a record fine in September of EUR 405 million, or around Rs. 3,435 crores. Meta wants to challenge this charge. The decision pertaining to the most recent fine was under review, Meta further stated in its statement on Monday.
Due to the fact that the EU headquarters of these internet behemoths are in Ireland, the DPC regulates companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, Tiktok, and others. There are presently 40 open investigations into these companies, including 13 involving Meta.
Under the “One Stop Shop” General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework put in place in 2018, the regulator has the authority to levy fines of up to 4% of a company’s global revenue. The efforts Facebook has taken, according to the DPC, were among the mitigating circumstances in Monday’s judgment, which had been approved by all other pertinent EU regulators. Data privacy commissioner (DPC) Helen Dixon of Ireland told RTE on Monday that “we’ll keep going until the behavior actually change.
